Mark Morgan, the Obama administration chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who was fired one day after President Donald Trump took office, went public on Tuesday with a message that may surprise the White House: he supports Mr. Trump and his efforts to get funding for a border wall.
“I’m here today breaking my silence to tell the American people that the president is correct in what he’s doing,” Morgan said in an interview with the Law & Crime Network. “The wall works.”
When he was still running the Border Patrol, Morgan referred to the needs at the border as a “fence.” He told a Senate committee in November 2016, “Do we need more fencing? Yes. Does it work? Yes. Do we need it everywhere? No. Is it the sole answer? No.” Morgan again said on Tuesday that a physical barrier is not the whole answer and is not needed along the entire border, but it is significant.
“It would be like having a high-tech security system, but not having doors or windows in your house,” Morgan said.
Asked if he was encouraged by the White House to make his views known, Morgan said no.
“I’m doing this on my own for one reason,” he said. “I’m a patriot.”
Morgan says he was asked to resign by the Trump White House one day after the president signed an executive order authorizing the immediate construction of a border wall. Behind the scenes, Morgan believes, was pressure from officials of the Border Patrol agents union which opposed the appointment of an outsider to run the agency. Morgan spent the bulk of his law enforcement career with the FBI.
Morgan says he has questions about how President Trump has handled the issue, but that he bears no grudge about his own treatment.
Also appearing with Morgan on the Law & Crime Network was Richard Clarke, a national security adviser to both Republican and Democratic Presidents who said the Trump administration is not being honest about the threat of terrorists coming across the Southern Border.
“A wall will not stop terrorists from coming into the country,” Clarke said, stating that the Mexican border is not where they enter. “That’s never been the case.”
Clarke admitted that there are places along the border where a wall may be of use, but questioned whether it was so important that it’s worth $5 billion or warrants a government shutdown.
[Image via Law & Crime Network screengrab]
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